i3 User’s Guide

JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to display the table of contents.

This document contains all the information you need to configure and use the i3
window manager. If it does not, please check http://faq.i3wm.org/ first, then
contact us on IRC (preferred) or post your question(s) on the mailing list.

1. Default keybindings

For the "too long; didn’t read" people, here is an overview of the default
keybindings (click to see the full size image):

Keys to use with $mod (Alt):

Keys to use with Shift+$mod:

The red keys are the modifiers you need to press (by default), the blue keys
are your homerow.

2. Using i3

Throughout this guide, the keyword $mod will be used to refer to the
configured modifier. This is the Alt key (Mod1) by default, with the Windows
key (Mod4) being a popular alternative.

2.1. Opening terminals and moving around

One very basic operation is opening a new terminal. By default, the keybinding
for this is $mod+Enter, that is Alt+Enter in the default configuration. By
pressing $mod+Enter, a new terminal will be opened. It will fill the whole
space available on your screen.

If you now open another terminal, i3 will place it next to the current one,
splitting the screen size in half. Depending on your monitor, i3 will put the
created window beside the existing window (on wide displays) or below the
existing window (rotated displays).

To move the focus between the two terminals, you can use the direction keys
which you may know from the editor vi. However, in i3, your homerow is used
for these keys (in vi, the keys are shifted to the left by one for
compatibility with most keyboard layouts). Therefore, $mod+J is left, $mod+K
is down, $mod+L is up and $mod+; is right. So, to switch between the
terminals, use $mod+K or $mod+L. Of course, you can also use the arrow keys.

At the moment, your workspace is split (it contains two terminals) in a
specific direction (horizontal by default). Every window can be split
horizontally or vertically again, just like the workspace. The terminology is
"window" for a container that actually contains an X11 window (like a terminal
or browser) and "split container" for containers that consist of one or more
windows.

TODO: picture of the tree

To split a window vertically, press $mod+v before you create the new window.
To split it horizontally, press $mod+h.

2.2. Changing the container layout

A split container can have one of the following layouts:

splith/splitv

Windows are sized so that every window gets an equal amount of space in the
container. splith distributes the windows horizontally (windows are right next
to each other), splitv distributes them vertically (windows are on top of each
other).

stacking

Only the focused window in the container is displayed. You get a list of
windows at the top of the container.

tabbed

The same principle as stacking, but the list of windows at the top is only
a single line which is vertically split.

To switch modes, press $mod+e for splith/splitv (it toggles), $mod+s for
stacking and $mod+w for tabbed.

2.3. Toggling fullscreen mode for a window

To display a window in fullscreen mode or to go out of fullscreen mode again,
press $mod+f.

There is also a global fullscreen mode in i3 in which the client will span all
available outputs (the command is fullscreen toggle global).

2.4. Opening other applications

Aside from opening applications from a terminal, you can also use the handy
dmenu which is opened by pressing $mod+d by default. Just type the name
(or a part of it) of the application which you want to open. The corresponding
application has to be in your $PATH for this to work.

Additionally, if you have applications you open very frequently, you can
create a keybinding for starting the application directly. See the section
[configuring] for details.

2.5. Closing windows

If an application does not provide a mechanism for closing (most applications
provide a menu, the escape key or a shortcut like Control+W to close), you
can press $mod+Shift+q to kill a window. For applications which support
the WM_DELETE protocol, this will correctly close the application (saving
any modifications or doing other cleanup). If the application doesn’t support
the WM_DELETE protocol your X server will kill the window and the behaviour
depends on the application.

2.6. Using workspaces

Workspaces are an easy way to group a set of windows. By default, you are on
the first workspace, as the bar on the bottom left indicates. To switch to
another workspace, press $mod+num where num is the number of the workspace
you want to use. If the workspace does not exist yet, it will be created.

A common paradigm is to put the web browser on one workspace, communication
applications (mutt, irssi, …) on another one, and the ones with which you
work, on the third one. Of course, there is no need to follow this approach.

If you have multiple screens, a workspace will be created on each screen at
startup. If you open a new workspace, it will be bound to the screen you
created it on. When you switch to a workspace on another screen, i3 will set
focus to that screen.

2.7. Moving windows to workspaces

To move a window to another workspace, simply press $mod+Shift+num where
num is (like when switching workspaces) the number of the target workspace.
Similarly to switching workspaces, the target workspace will be created if
it does not yet exist.

2.8. Resizing

The easiest way to resize a container is by using the mouse: Grab the border
and move it to the wanted size.

See [resizingconfig] for how to configure i3 to be able to resize
columns/rows with your keyboard.

2.9. Restarting i3 inplace

To restart i3 in place (and thus get into a clean state if there is a bug, or
to upgrade to a newer version of i3) you can use $mod+Shift+r.

2.10. Exiting i3

To cleanly exit i3 without killing your X server, you can use $mod+Shift+e.
By default, a dialog will ask you to confirm if you really want to quit.

2.11. Floating

Floating mode is the opposite of tiling mode. The position and size of
a window are not managed automatically by i3, but manually by
you. Using this mode violates the tiling paradigm but can be useful
for some corner cases like "Save as" dialog windows, or toolbar
windows (GIMP or similar). Those windows usually set the appropriate
hint and are opened in floating mode by default.

You can toggle floating mode for a window by pressing $mod+Shift+Space. By
dragging the window’s titlebar with your mouse you can move the window
around. By grabbing the borders and moving them you can resize the window. You
can also do that by using the [floating_modifier]. Another way to resize
floating windows using the mouse is to right-click on the titlebar and drag.

3. Tree

i3 stores all information about the X11 outputs, workspaces and layout of the
windows on them in a tree. The root node is the X11 root window, followed by
the X11 outputs, then dock areas and a content container, then workspaces and
finally the windows themselves. In previous versions of i3 we had multiple lists
(of outputs, workspaces) and a table for each workspace. That approach turned
out to be complicated to use (snapping), understand and implement.

3.1. The tree consists of Containers

The building blocks of our tree are so called Containers. A Container can
host a window (meaning an X11 window, one that you can actually see and use,
like a browser). Alternatively, it could contain one or more Containers. A
simple example is the workspace: When you start i3 with a single monitor, a
single workspace and you open two terminal windows, you will end up with a tree
like this:

Figure 1. Two terminals on standard workspace

3.2. Orientation and Split Containers

It is only natural to use so-called Split Containers in order to build a
layout when using a tree as data structure. In i3, every Container has an
orientation (horizontal, vertical or unspecified) and the orientation depends
on the layout the container is in (vertical for splitv and stacking, horizontal
for splith and tabbed). So, in our example with the workspace, the default
layout of the workspace Container is splith (most monitors are widescreen
nowadays). If you change the layout to splitv ($mod+v in the default config)
and then open two terminals, i3 will configure your windows like this:

Figure 2. Vertical Workspace Orientation

An interesting new feature of i3 since version 4 is the ability to split anything:
Let’s assume you have two terminals on a workspace (with splith layout, that is
horizontal orientation), focus is on the right terminal. Now you want to open
another terminal window below the current one. If you would just open a new
terminal window, it would show up to the right due to the splith layout.
Instead, press $mod+v to split the container with the splitv layout (to
open a Horizontal Split Container, use $mod+h). Now you can open a new
terminal and it will open below the current one:

Figure 3. Vertical Split Container

You probably guessed it already: There is no limit on how deep your hierarchy
of splits can be.

3.3. Focus parent

Let’s stay with our example from above. We have a terminal on the left and two
vertically split terminals on the right, focus is on the bottom right one. When
you open a new terminal, it will open below the current one.

So, how can you open a new terminal window to the right of the current one?
The solution is to use focus parent, which will focus the Parent Container of
the current Container. In this case, you would focus the Vertical Split
Container which is inside the horizontally oriented workspace. Thus, now new
windows will be opened to the right of the Vertical Split Container:

Figure 4. Focus parent, then open new terminal

3.4. Implicit containers

In some cases, i3 needs to implicitly create a container to fulfill your
command.

One example is the following scenario: You start i3 with a single monitor and a
single workspace on which you open three terminal windows. All these terminal
windows are directly attached to one node inside i3’s layout tree, the
workspace node. By default, the workspace node’s orientation is horizontal.

Now you move one of these terminals down ($mod+Shift+k by default). The
workspace node’s orientation will be changed to vertical. The terminal window
you moved down is directly attached to the workspace and appears on the bottom
of the screen. A new (horizontal) container was created to accommodate the
other two terminal windows. You will notice this when switching to tabbed mode
(for example). You would end up having one tab called "another container" and
the other one being the terminal window you moved down.

4. Configuring i3

This is where the real fun begins ;-). Most things are very dependent on your
ideal working environment so we can’t make reasonable defaults for them.

While not using a programming language for the configuration, i3 stays
quite flexible in regards to the things you usually want your window manager
to do.

For example, you can configure bindings to jump to specific windows,
you can set specific applications to start on specific workspaces, you can
automatically start applications, you can change the colors of i3, and you
can bind your keys to do useful things.

To change the configuration of i3, copy /etc/i3/config to ~/.i3/config
(or ~/.config/i3/config if you like the XDG directory scheme) and edit it
with a text editor.

On first start (and on all following starts, unless you have a configuration
file), i3 will offer you to create a configuration file. You can tell the
wizard to use either Alt (Mod1) or Windows (Mod4) as modifier in the config
file. Also, the created config file will use the key symbols of your current
keyboard layout. To start the wizard, use the command i3-config-wizard.
Please note that you must not have ~/.i3/config, otherwise the wizard will
exit.

4.1. Comments

It is possible and recommended to use comments in your configuration file to
properly document your setup for later reference. Comments are started with
a # and can only be used at the beginning of a line:

Examples:

# This is a comment

4.2. Fonts

i3 has support for both X core fonts and FreeType fonts (through Pango) to
render window titles.

To generate an X core font description, you can use xfontsel(1). To see
special characters (Unicode), you need to use a font which supports the
ISO-10646 encoding.

A FreeType font description is composed by a font family, a style, a weight,
a variant, a stretch and a size.
FreeType fonts support right-to-left rendering and contain often more
Unicode glyphs than X core fonts.

If i3 cannot open the configured font, it will output an error in the logfile
and fall back to a working font.

4.3. Keyboard bindings

A keyboard binding makes i3 execute a command (see below) upon pressing a
specific key. i3 allows you to bind either on keycodes or on keysyms (you can
also mix your bindings, though i3 will not protect you from overlapping ones).

A keysym (key symbol) is a description for a specific symbol, like "a"
or "b", but also more strange ones like "underscore" instead of "_". These
are the ones you use in Xmodmap to remap your keys. To get the current
mapping of your keys, use xmodmap -pke. To interactively enter a key and
see what keysym it is configured to, use xev.

Keycodes do not need to have a symbol assigned (handy for custom vendor
hotkeys on some notebooks) and they will not change their meaning as you
switch to a different keyboard layout (when using xmodmap).

My recommendation is: If you often switch keyboard layouts but you want to keep
your bindings in the same physical location on the keyboard, use keycodes.
If you don’t switch layouts, and want a clean and simple config file, use
keysyms.

Some tools (such as import or xdotool) might be unable to run upon a
KeyPress event, because the keyboard/pointer is still grabbed. For these
situations, the --release flag can be used, which will execute the command
after the keys have been released.

Unlike other window managers, i3 can use Mode_switch as a modifier. This allows
you to remap capslock (for example) to Mode_switch and use it for both: typing
umlauts or special characters and having some comfortably reachable key
bindings. For example, when typing, capslock+1 or capslock+2 for switching
workspaces is totally convenient. Try it :-).

4.4. Mouse bindings

A mouse binding makes i3 execute a command upon pressing a specific mouse
button in the scope of the clicked container (see [command_criteria]). You
can configure mouse bindings in a similar way to key bindings.

Syntax:

bindsym [--release] [--whole-window] [Modifiers+]button[n] command

By default, the binding will only run when you click on the titlebar of the
window. If the --whole-window flag is given, it will run when any part of the
window is clicked. If the --release flag is given, it will run when the mouse
button is released.

Examples:

# The middle button over a titlebar kills the window
bindsym --release button2 kill
# The middle button and a modifer over any part of the window kills the window
bindsym --whole-window $mod+button2 kill
# The right button toggles floating
bindsym button3 floating toggle
bindsym $mod+button3 floating toggle
# The side buttons move the window around
bindsym button9 move left
bindsym button8 move right

4.5. The floating modifier

To move floating windows with your mouse, you can either grab their titlebar
or configure the so called floating modifier which you can then press and
click anywhere in the window itself to move it. The most common setup is to
use the same key you use for managing windows (Mod1 for example). Then
you can press Mod1, click into a window using your left mouse button, and drag
it to the position you want.

When holding the floating modifier, you can resize a floating window by
pressing the right mouse button on it and moving around while holding it. If
you hold the shift button as well, the resize will be proportional (the aspect
ratio will be preserved).

Syntax:

floating_modifier <Modifiers>

Example:

floating_modifier Mod1

4.6. Constraining floating window size

The maximum and minimum dimensions of floating windows can be specified. If
either dimension of floating_maximum_size is specified as -1, that dimension
will be unconstrained with respect to its maximum value. If either dimension of
floating_maximum_size is undefined, or specified as 0, i3 will use a default
value to constrain the maximum size. floating_minimum_size is treated in a
manner analogous to floating_maximum_size.

4.10. Hiding vertical borders

You can hide vertical borders adjacent to the screen edges using
hide_edge_borders. This is useful if you are using scrollbars, or do not want
to waste even two pixels in displayspace. Default is none.

Syntax:

hide_edge_borders <none|vertical|horizontal|both>

Example:

hide_edge_borders vertical

4.11. Arbitrary commands for specific windows (for_window)

With the for_window command, you can let i3 execute any command when it
encounters a specific window. This can be used to set windows to floating or to
change their border style, for example.

4.12. Variables

As you learned in the section about keyboard bindings, you will have
to configure lots of bindings containing modifier keys. If you want to save
yourself some typing and be able to change the modifier you use later,
variables can be handy.

Syntax:

set $name value

Example:

set $m Mod1
bindsym $m+Shift+r restart

Variables are directly replaced in the file when parsing. Variables expansion
is not recursive so it is not possible to define a variable with a value
containing another variable. There is no fancy handling and there are
absolutely no plans to change this. If you need a more dynamic configuration
you should create a little script which generates a configuration file and run
it before starting i3 (for example in your ~/.xsession file).

4.13. Automatically putting clients on specific workspaces

To automatically make a specific window show up on a specific workspace, you
can use an assignment. You can match windows by using any criteria,
see [command_criteria]. It is recommended that you match on window classes
(and instances, when appropriate) instead of window titles whenever possible
because some applications first create their window, and then worry about
setting the correct title. Firefox with Vimperator comes to mind. The window
starts up being named Firefox, and only when Vimperator is loaded does the
title change. As i3 will get the title as soon as the application maps the
window (mapping means actually displaying it on the screen), you’d need to have
to match on Firefox in this case.

Assignments are processed by i3 in the order in which they appear in the config
file. The first one which matches the window wins and later assignments are not
considered.

Note that the arrow is not required, it just looks good :-). If you decide to
use it, it has to be a UTF-8 encoded arrow, not -> or something like that.

To get the class and instance, you can use xprop. After clicking on the
window, you will see the following output:

xprop:

WM_CLASS(STRING) = "irssi", "URxvt"

The first part of the WM_CLASS is the instance ("irssi" in this example), the
second part is the class ("URxvt" in this example).

Should you have any problems with assignments, make sure to check the i3
logfile first (see http://i3wm.org/docs/debugging.html). It includes more
details about the matching process and the window’s actual class, instance and
title when starting up.

Note that if you want to start an application just once on a specific
workspace, but you don’t want to assign all instances of it permanently, you
can make use of i3’s startup-notification support (see [exec]) in your config
file in the following way:

Start iceweasel on workspace 3 (once):

# Start iceweasel on workspace 3, then switch back to workspace 1
# (Being a command-line utility, i3-msg does not support startup notifications,
# hence the exec --no-startup-id.)
# (Starting iceweasel with i3’s exec command is important in order to make i3
# create a startup notification context, without which the iceweasel window(s)
# cannot be matched onto the workspace on which the command was started.)
exec --no-startup-id i3-msg 'workspace 3; exec iceweasel; workspace 1'

4.14. Automatically starting applications on i3 startup

By using the exec keyword outside a keybinding, you can configure
which commands will be performed by i3 on initial startup. exec
commands will not run when restarting i3, if you need a command to run
also when restarting i3 you should use the exec_always
keyword. These commands will be run in order.

See [command_chaining] for details on the special meaning of ; (semicolon)
and , (comma): they chain commands together in i3, so you need to use quoted
strings if they appear in your command.

4.15. Automatically putting workspaces on specific screens

If you assign clients to workspaces, it might be handy to put the
workspaces on specific screens. Also, the assignment of workspaces to screens
will determine which workspace i3 uses for a new screen when adding screens
or when starting (e.g., by default it will use 1 for the first screen, 2 for
the second screen and so on).

Syntax:

workspace <workspace> output <output>

The output is the name of the RandR output you attach your screen to. On a
laptop, you might have VGA1 and LVDS1 as output names. You can see the
available outputs by running xrandr --current.

Note that for the window decorations, the color around the child window is the
background color, and the border color is only the two thin lines at the top of
the window.

The indicator color is used for indicating where a new window will be opened.
For horizontal split containers, the right border will be painted in indicator
color, for vertical split containers, the bottom border. This only applies to
single windows within a split container, which are otherwise indistinguishable
from single windows outside of a split container.

4.17. Interprocess communication

i3 uses Unix sockets to provide an IPC interface. This allows third-party
programs to get information from i3, such as the current workspaces
(to display a workspace bar), and to control i3.

The IPC socket is enabled by default and will be created in
/tmp/i3-%u.XXXXXX/ipc-socket.%p where %u is your UNIX username, %p is
the PID of i3 and XXXXXX is a string of random characters from the portable
filename character set (see mkdtemp(3)).

You can override the default path through the environment-variable I3SOCK or
by specifying the ipc-socket directive. This is discouraged, though, since i3
does the right thing by default. If you decide to change it, it is strongly
recommended to set this to a location in your home directory so that no other
user can create that directory.

Examples:

ipc-socket ~/.i3/i3-ipc.sock

You can then use the i3-msg application to perform any command listed in
the next section.

4.18. Focus follows mouse

By default, window focus follows your mouse movements. However, if you have a
setup where your mouse usually is in your way (like a touchpad on your laptop
which you do not want to disable completely), you might want to disable focus
follows mouse and control focus only by using your keyboard. The mouse will
still be useful inside the currently active window (for example to click on
links in your browser window).

Syntax:

focus_follows_mouse <yes|no>

Example:

focus_follows_mouse no

4.19. Mouse warping

By default, when switching focus to a window on a different output (e.g.
focusing a window on workspace 3 on output VGA-1, coming from workspace 2 on
LVDS-1), the mouse cursor is warped to the center of that window.

With the mouse_warping option, you can control when the mouse cursor should
be warped. none disables warping entirely, whereas output is the default
behavior described above.

Syntax:

mouse_warping <output|none>

Example:

mouse_warping none

4.20. Popups during fullscreen mode

When you are in fullscreen mode, some applications still open popup windows
(take Xpdf for example). This is because these applications may not be aware
that they are in fullscreen mode (they do not check the corresponding hint).
There are three things which are possible to do in this situation:

Display the popup if it belongs to the fullscreen application only. This is
the default and should be reasonable behavior for most users.

Just ignore the popup (don’t map it). This won’t interrupt you while you are
in fullscreen. However, some apps might react badly to this (deadlock until
you go out of fullscreen).

Leave fullscreen mode.

Syntax:

popup_during_fullscreen <smart|ignore|leave_fullscreen>

Example:

popup_during_fullscreen smart

4.21. Focus wrapping

When being in a tabbed or stacked container, the first container will be
focused when you use focus down on the last container — the focus wraps. If
however there is another stacked/tabbed container in that direction, focus will
be set on that container. This is the default behavior so you can navigate to
all your windows without having to use focus parent.

If you want the focus to always wrap and you are aware of using focus
parent to switch to different containers, you can use the
force_focus_wrapping configuration directive. After enabling it, the focus
will always wrap.

Syntax:

force_focus_wrapping <yes|no>

Example:

force_focus_wrapping yes

4.22. Forcing Xinerama

As explained in-depth in http://i3wm.org/docs/multi-monitor.html, some X11
video drivers (especially the nVidia binary driver) only provide support for
Xinerama instead of RandR. In such a situation, i3 must be told to use the
inferior Xinerama API explicitly and therefore don’t provide support for
reconfiguring your screens on the fly (they are read only once on startup and
that’s it).

For people who cannot modify their ~/.xsession to add the
--force-xinerama commandline parameter, a configuration option is provided:

Syntax:

force_xinerama <yes|no>

Example:

force_xinerama yes

Also note that your output names are not descriptive (like HDMI1) when using
Xinerama, instead they are counted up, starting at 0: xinerama-0, xinerama-1, …

4.23. Automatic back-and-forth when switching to the current workspace

This configuration directive enables automatic workspace back_and_forth (see
[back_and_forth]) when switching to the workspace that is currently focused.

For instance: Assume you are on workspace "1: www" and switch to "2: IM" using
mod+2 because somebody sent you a message. You don’t need to remember where you
came from now, you can just press $mod+2 again to switch back to "1: www".

Syntax:

workspace_auto_back_and_forth <yes|no>

Example:

workspace_auto_back_and_forth yes

4.24. Delaying urgency hint reset on workspace change

If an application on another workspace sets an urgency hint, switching to this
workspace may lead to immediate focus of the application, which also means the
window decoration color would be immediately reset to client.focused. This
may make it unnecessarily hard to tell which window originally raised the
event.

In order to prevent this, you can tell i3 to delay resetting the urgency state
by a certain time using the force_display_urgency_hint directive. Setting the
value to 0 disables this feature.

The default is 500ms.

Syntax:

force_display_urgency_hint <timeout> ms

Example:

force_display_urgency_hint 500 ms

5. Configuring i3bar

The bar at the bottom of your monitor is drawn by a separate process called
i3bar. Having this part of "the i3 user interface" in a separate process has
several advantages:

It is a modular approach. If you don’t need a workspace bar at all, or if
you prefer a different one (dzen2, xmobar, maybe even gnome-panel?), you can
just remove the i3bar configuration and start your favorite bar instead.

It follows the UNIX philosophy of "Make each program do one thing well".
While i3 manages your windows well, i3bar is good at displaying a bar on
each monitor (unless you configure it otherwise).

It leads to two separate, clean codebases. If you want to understand i3, you
don’t need to bother with the details of i3bar and vice versa.

That said, i3bar is configured in the same configuration file as i3. This is
because it is tightly coupled with i3 (in contrary to i3lock or i3status which
are useful for people using other window managers). Therefore, it makes no
sense to use a different configuration place when we already have a good
configuration infrastructure in place.

Configuring your workspace bar starts with opening a bar block. You can have
multiple bar blocks to use different settings for different outputs (monitors):

Example:

bar {
status_command i3status
}

5.1. i3bar command

By default i3 will just pass i3bar and let your shell handle the execution,
searching your $PATH for a correct version.
If you have a different i3bar somewhere or the binary is not in your $PATH you can
tell i3 what to execute.

The specified command will be passed to sh -c, so you can use globbing and
have to have correct quoting etc.

Syntax:

i3bar_command command

Example:

bar {
i3bar_command /home/user/bin/i3bar
}

5.2. Statusline command

i3bar can run a program and display every line of its stdout output on the
right hand side of the bar. This is useful to display system information like
your current IP address, battery status or date/time.

The specified command will be passed to sh -c, so you can use globbing and
have to have correct quoting etc.

Syntax:

status_command command

Example:

bar {
status_command i3status --config ~/.i3status.conf
}

5.3. Display mode

You can either have i3bar be visible permanently at one edge of the screen
(dock mode) or make it show up when you press your modifier key (hide mode).
It is also possible to force i3bar to always stay hidden (invisible
mode). The modifier key can be configured using the modifier option.

The mode option can be changed during runtime through the bar mode command.
On reload the mode will be reverted to its configured value.

The hide mode maximizes screen space that can be used for actual windows. Also,
i3bar sends the SIGSTOP and SIGCONT signals to the statusline process to
save battery power.

Invisible mode allows to permanently maximize screen space, as the bar is never
shown. Thus, you can configure i3bar to not disturb you by popping up because
of an urgency hint or because the modifier key is pressed.

In order to control whether i3bar is hidden or shown in hide mode, there exists
the hidden_state option, which has no effect in dock mode or invisible mode. It
indicates the current hidden_state of the bar: (1) The bar acts like in normal
hide mode, it is hidden and is only unhidden in case of urgency hints or by
pressing the modifier key (hide state), or (2) it is drawn on top of the
currently visible workspace (show state).

Like the mode, the hidden_state can also be controlled through i3, this can be
done by using the bar hidden_state command.

The default mode is dock mode; in hide mode, the default modifier is Mod4 (usually
the windows key). The default value for the hidden_state is hide.

5.4. Mouse button commands

Specifies a command to run when a button was pressed on i3bar to override the
default behavior. Currently only the mouse wheel buttons are supported. This is
useful for disabling the scroll wheel action or running scripts that implement
custom behavior for these buttons.

5.5. Bar ID

Specifies the bar ID for the configured bar instance. If this option is missing,
the ID is set to bar-x, where x corresponds to the position of the embedding
bar block in the config file (bar-0, bar-1, …).

Syntax:

id <bar_id>

Example:

bar {
id bar-1
}

5.6. Position

This option determines in which edge of the screen i3bar should show up.

The default is bottom.

Syntax:

position <top|bottom>

Example:

bar {
position top
}

5.7. Output(s)

You can restrict i3bar to one or more outputs (monitors). The default is to
handle all outputs. Restricting the outputs is useful for using different
options for different outputs by using multiple bar blocks.

5.10. Custom separator symbol

Specifies a custom symbol to be used for the separator as opposed to the vertical,
one pixel thick separator.

Syntax:

separator_symbol <symbol>

Example:

bar {
separator_symbol ":|:"
}

5.11. Workspace buttons

Specifies whether workspace buttons should be shown or not. This is useful if
you want to display a statusline-only bar containing additional information.

The default is to show workspace buttons.

Syntax:

workspace_buttons <yes|no>

Example:

bar {
workspace_buttons no
}

5.12. Strip workspace numbers

Specifies whether workspace numbers should be displayed within the workspace
buttons. This is useful if you want to have a named workspace that stays in
order on the bar according to its number without displaying the number prefix.

When strip_workspace_numbers is set to yes, any workspace that has a name of
the form "[n]:[NAME]" will display only the name. You could use this, for
instance, to display Roman numerals rather than digits by naming your
workspaces to "1:I", "2:II", "3:III", "4:IV", …

The default is to display the full name within the workspace button.

Syntax:

strip_workspace_numbers <yes|no>

Example:

bar {
strip_workspace_numbers yes
}

5.13. Binding Mode indicator

Specifies whether the current binding mode indicator should be shown or not.
This is useful if you want to hide the workspace buttons but still be able
to see the current binding mode indicator.
For an example of a mode definition, see [resizingconfig].

The default is to show the mode indicator.

Syntax:

binding_mode_indicator <yes|no>

Example:

bar {
binding_mode_indicator no
}

5.14. Colors

As with i3, colors are in HTML hex format (#rrggbb). The following colors can
be configured at the moment:

background

Background color of the bar.

statusline

Text color to be used for the statusline.

separator

Text color to be used for the separator.

focused_workspace

Border, background and text color for a workspace button when the workspace
has focus.

active_workspace

Border, background and text color for a workspace button when the workspace
is active (visible) on some output, but the focus is on another one.
You can only tell this apart from the focused workspace when you are
using multiple monitors.

inactive_workspace

Border, background and text color for a workspace button when the workspace
does not have focus and is not active (visible) on any output. This
will be the case for most workspaces.

urgent_workspace

Border, background and text color for a workspace button when the workspace
contains a window with the urgency hint set. Also applies to mode indicators.

6. List of commands

Commands are what you bind to specific keypresses. You can also issue commands
at runtime without pressing a key by using the IPC interface. An easy way to
do this is to use the i3-msg utility:

Example:

# execute this on your shell to make the current container borderless
i3-msg border none

Commands can be chained by using ; (a semicolon). So, to move a window to a
specific workspace and immediately switch to that workspace, you can configure
the following keybinding:

Example:

bindsym $mod+x move container to workspace 3; workspace 3

Furthermore, you can change the scope of a command - that is, which containers
should be affected by that command, by using various criteria. The criteria
are specified before any command in a pair of square brackets and are separated
by space.

When using multiple commands, separate them by using a , (a comma) instead of
a semicolon. Criteria apply only until the next semicolon, so if you use a
semicolon to separate commands, only the first one will be executed for the
matched window(s).

Compares the i3-internal container ID, which you can get via the IPC
interface. Handy for scripting.

The criteria class, instance, role, title and mark are actually
regular expressions (PCRE). See pcresyntax(3) or perldoc perlre for
information on how to use them.

6.1. Executing applications (exec)

What good is a window manager if you can’t actually start any applications?
The exec command starts an application by passing the command you specify to a
shell. This implies that you can use globbing (wildcards) and programs will be
searched in your $PATH.

See [command_chaining] for details on the special meaning of ; (semicolon)
and , (comma): they chain commands together in i3, so you need to use quoted
strings if they appear in your command.

The --no-startup-id parameter disables startup-notification support for this
particular exec command. With startup-notification, i3 can make sure that a
window appears on the workspace on which you used the exec command. Also, it
will change the X11 cursor to watch (a clock) while the application is
launching. So, if an application is not startup-notification aware (most GTK
and Qt using applications seem to be, though), you will end up with a watch
cursor for 60 seconds.

6.2. Splitting containers

The split command makes the current window a split container. Split containers
can contain multiple windows. Depending on the layout of the split container,
new windows get placed to the right of the current one (splith) or new windows
get placed below the current one (splitv).

If you apply this command to a split container with the same orientation,
nothing will happen. If you use a different orientation, the split container’s
orientation will be changed (if it does not have more than one window). Use
layout toggle split to change the layout of any split container from splitv
to splith or vice-versa.

To make the current window (!) fullscreen, use fullscreen enable (or
fullscreen enable global for the global mode), to leave either fullscreen
mode use fullscreen disable, and to toggle between these two states use
fullscreen toggle (or fullscreen toggle global).

6.5. Changing (named) workspaces/moving to workspaces

To change to a specific workspace, use the workspace command, followed by the
number or name of the workspace. To move containers to specific workspaces, use
move container to workspace.

You can also switch to the next and previous workspace with the commands
workspace next and workspace prev, which is handy, for example, if you have
workspace 1, 3, 4 and 9 and you want to cycle through them with a single key
combination. To restrict those to the current output, use workspace
next_on_output and workspace prev_on_output. Similarly, you can use move
container to workspace next, move container to workspace prev to move a
container to the next/previous workspace and move container to workspace current
(the last one makes sense only when used with criteria).

See [move_to_outputs] for how to move a container/workspace to a different
RandR output.

To switch back to the previously focused workspace, use workspace
back_and_forth; likewise, you can move containers to the previously focused
workspace using move container to workspace back_and_forth.

6.5.1. Named workspaces

Workspaces are identified by their name. So, instead of using numbers in the
workspace command, you can use an arbitrary name:

Example:

bindsym $mod+1 workspace mail
...

If you want the workspace to have a number and a name, just prefix the
number, like this:

Example:

bindsym $mod+1 workspace 1: mail
bindsym $mod+2 workspace 2: www
...

Note that the workspace will really be named "1: mail". i3 treats workspace
names beginning with a number in a slightly special way. Normally, named
workspaces are ordered the way they appeared. When they start with a number, i3
will order them numerically. Also, you will be able to use workspace number 1
to switch to the workspace which begins with number 1, regardless of which name
it has. This is useful in case you are changing the workspace’s name
dynamically. To combine both commands you can use workspace number 1: mail to
specify a default name if there’s currently no workspace starting with a "1".

6.5.2. Renaming workspaces

You can rename workspaces. This might be useful to start with the default
numbered workspaces, do your work, and rename the workspaces afterwards to
reflect what’s actually on them. You can also omit the old name to rename
the currently focused workspace. This is handy if you want to use the
rename command with i3-input.

# Move the current workspace to the next output
# (effectively toggles when you only have two outputs)
bindsym $mod+x move workspace to output right
# Put this window on the presentation output.
bindsym $mod+x move container to output VGA1

6.8. Resizing containers/windows

If you want to resize containers/windows using your keyboard, you can use the
resize command:

Syntax:

resize <grow|shrink> <direction> [<px> px [or <ppt> ppt]]

Direction can either be one of up, down, left or right. Or you can be
less specific and use width or height, in which case i3 will take/give
space from all the other containers. The optional pixel argument specifies by
how many pixels a floating container should be grown or shrunk (the default
is 10 pixels). The ppt argument means percentage points and specifies by how
many percentage points a tiling container should be grown or shrunk (the
default is 10 percentage points).

6.9. Jumping to specific windows

Often when in a multi-monitor environment, you want to quickly jump to a
specific window. For example, while working on workspace 3 you may want to
jump to your mail client to email your boss that you’ve achieved some
important goal. Instead of figuring out how to navigate to your mail client,
it would be more convenient to have a shortcut. You can use the focus command
with criteria for that.

Syntax:

[class="class"] focus
[title="title"] focus

Examples:

# Get me to the next open VIM instance
bindsym $mod+a [class="urxvt" title="VIM"] focus

6.10. VIM-like marks (mark/goto)

This feature is like the jump feature: It allows you to directly jump to a
specific window (this means switching to the appropriate workspace and setting
focus to the windows). However, you can directly mark a specific window with
an arbitrary label and use it afterwards. You can unmark the label in the same
way, using the unmark command. If you don’t specify a label, unmark removes all
marks. You do not need to ensure that your windows have unique classes or
titles, and you do not need to change your configuration file.

As the command needs to include the label with which you want to mark the
window, you cannot simply bind it to a key. i3-input is a tool created
for this purpose: It lets you input a command and sends the command to i3. It
can also prefix this command and display a custom prompt for the input dialog.

6.11. Changing border style

To change the border of the current client, you can use border normal to use the normal
border (including window title), border 1pixel to use a 1-pixel border (no window title)
and border none to make the client borderless.

There is also border toggle which will toggle the different border styles.

6.12. Enabling shared memory logging

As described in http://i3wm.org/docs/debugging.html, i3 can log to a shared
memory buffer, which you can dump using i3-dump-log. The shmlog command
allows you to enable or disable the shared memory logging at runtime.

Note that when using shmlog <size_in_bytes>, the current log will be
discarded and a new one will be started.

6.13. Enabling debug logging

The debuglog command allows you to enable or disable debug logging at
runtime. Debug logging is much more verbose than non-debug logging. This
command does not activate shared memory logging (shmlog), and as such is most
likely useful in combination with the above-described [shmlog] command.

Syntax:

debuglog <on|off|toggle>

Examples:

# Enable/disable logging
bindsym $mod+x debuglog toggle

6.14. Reloading/Restarting/Exiting

You can make i3 reload its configuration file with reload. You can also
restart i3 inplace with the restart command to get it out of some weird state
(if that should ever happen) or to perform an upgrade without having to restart
your X session. To exit i3 properly, you can use the exit command,
however you don’t need to (simply killing your X session is fine as well).

6.15. Scratchpad

There are two commands to use any existing window as scratchpad window. move
scratchpad will move a window to the scratchpad workspace. This will make it
invisible until you show it again. There is no way to open that workspace.
Instead, when using scratchpad show, the window will be shown again, as a
floating window, centered on your current workspace (using scratchpad show on
a visible scratchpad window will make it hidden again, so you can have a
keybinding to toggle). Note that this is just a normal floating window, so if
you want to "remove it from scratchpad", you can simple make it tiling again
(floating toggle).

As the name indicates, this is useful for having a window with your favorite
editor always at hand. However, you can also use this for other permanently
running applications which you don’t want to see all the time: Your music
player, alsamixer, maybe even your mail client…?

Syntax:

move scratchpad
scratchpad show

Examples:

# Make the currently focused window a scratchpad
bindsym $mod+Shift+minus move scratchpad
# Show the first scratchpad window
bindsym $mod+minus scratchpad show
# Show the sup-mail scratchpad window, if any.
bindsym mod4+s [title="^Sup ::"] scratchpad show

6.16. Nop

There is a no operation command nop which allows you to override default
behavior. This can be useful for, e.g., disabling a focus change on clicks with
the middle mouse button.

The optional comment argument is ignored, but will be printed to the log file
for debugging purposes.

6.17. i3bar control

There are two options in the configuration of each i3bar instance that can be
changed during runtime by invoking a command through i3. The commands bar
hidden_state and bar mode allow setting the current hidden_state
respectively mode option of each bar. It is also possible to toggle between
hide state and show state as well as between dock mode and hide mode. Each
i3bar instance can be controlled individually by specifying a bar_id, if none
is given, the command is executed for all bar instances.

7. Multiple monitors

As you can see in the goal list on the website, i3 was specifically developed
with support for multiple monitors in mind. This section will explain how to
handle multiple monitors.

When you have only one monitor, things are simple. You usually start with
workspace 1 on your monitor and open new ones as you need them.

When you have more than one monitor, each monitor will get an initial
workspace. The first monitor gets 1, the second gets 2 and a possible third
would get 3. When you switch to a workspace on a different monitor, i3 will
switch to that monitor and then switch to the workspace. This way, you don’t
need shortcuts to switch to a specific monitor, and you don’t need to remember
where you put which workspace. New workspaces will be opened on the currently
active monitor. It is not possible to have a monitor without a workspace.

The idea of making workspaces global is based on the observation that most
users have a very limited set of workspaces on their additional monitors.
They are often used for a specific task (browser, shell) or for monitoring
several things (mail, IRC, syslog, …). Thus, using one workspace on one monitor
and "the rest" on the other monitors often makes sense. However, as you can
create an unlimited number of workspaces in i3 and tie them to specific
screens, you can have the "traditional" approach of having X workspaces per
screen by changing your configuration (using modes, for example).

7.1. Configuring your monitors

To help you get going if you have never used multiple monitors before, here is
a short overview of the xrandr options which will probably be of interest to
you. It is always useful to get an overview of the current screen configuration.
Just run "xrandr" and you will get an output like the following:

Several things are important here: You can see that LVDS1 is connected (of
course, it is the internal flat panel) but VGA1 is not. If you have a monitor
connected to one of the ports but xrandr still says "disconnected", you should
check your cable, monitor or graphics driver.

The maximum resolution you can see at the end of the first line is the maximum
combined resolution of your monitors. By default, it is usually too low and has
to be increased by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

So, say you connected VGA1 and want to use it as an additional screen:

xrandr --output VGA1 --auto --left-of LVDS1

This command makes xrandr try to find the native resolution of the device
connected to VGA1 and configures it to the left of your internal flat panel.
When running "xrandr" again, the output looks like this:

7.2. Interesting configuration for multi-monitor environments

There are several things to configure in i3 which may be interesting if you
have more than one monitor:

You can specify which workspace should be put on which screen. This
allows you to have a different set of workspaces when starting than just
1 for the first monitor, 2 for the second and so on. See
[workspace_screen].

If you want some applications to generally open on the bigger screen
(MPlayer, Firefox, …), you can assign them to a specific workspace, see
[assign_workspace].

If you have many workspaces on many monitors, it might get hard to keep
track of which window you put where. Thus, you can use vim-like marks to
quickly switch between windows. See [vim_like_marks].

8. i3 and the rest of your software world

8.1. Displaying a status line

A very common thing amongst users of exotic window managers is a status line at
some corner of the screen. It is an often superior replacement to the widget
approach you have in the task bar of a traditional desktop environment.

If you don’t already have your favorite way of generating such a status line
(self-written scripts, conky, …), then i3status is the recommended tool for
this task. It was written in C with the goal of using as few syscalls as
possible to reduce the time your CPU is woken up from sleep states. Because
i3status only spits out text, you need to combine it with some other tool, like
i3bar. See [status_command] for how to display i3status in i3bar.

Regardless of which application you use to display the status line, you
want to make sure that it registers as a dock window using EWMH hints. i3 will
position the window either at the top or at the bottom of the screen, depending
on which hint the application sets. With i3bar, you can configure its position,
see [i3bar_position].

8.2. Giving presentations (multi-monitor)

When giving a presentation, you typically want the audience to see what you see
on your screen and then go through a series of slides (if the presentation is
simple). For more complex presentations, you might want to have some notes
which only you can see on your screen, while the audience can only see the
slides.

8.2.1. Case 1: everybody gets the same output

This is the simple case. You connect your computer to the video projector,
turn on both (computer and video projector) and configure your X server to
clone the internal flat panel of your computer to the video output:

xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768 --same-as LVDS1

i3 will then use the lowest common subset of screen resolutions, the rest of
your screen will be left untouched (it will show the X background). So, in
our example, this would be 1024x768 (my notebook has 1280x800).

8.2.2. Case 2: you can see more than your audience

This case is a bit harder. First of all, you should configure the VGA output
somewhere near your internal flat panel, say right of it:

xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768 --right-of LVDS1

Now, i3 will put a new workspace (depending on your settings) on the new screen
and you are in multi-monitor mode (see [multi_monitor]).

Because i3 is not a compositing window manager, there is no ability to
display a window on two screens at the same time. Instead, your presentation
software needs to do this job (that is, open a window on each screen).